Has anyone here DMed yet? It looks like the main feed when I do it 
, so curious if I'm missing something or if I'm sharing everything or if that's how it's supposed to work 
???
@zoeleblanc I see only a few public posts by you, none of your DMs, but I agree it makes one nervous to see it mixed in there (though color is a bit different for me). I do notice the difference between the 
symbol and the other
@konrad Thanks for the sanity check 
!! Also had not noticed the colors and symbols so thanks for sharing that too 
!!
@zoeleblanc @konrad I get the sense from https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon#how-do-privacy-settings-work that basically DMs are implemented as the inner ring of privacy settings on all, er, toots, which seems to imply that in some cases instance-to-instance things you think are DMs might be published on the remote instance, especially if it runs some other fediverse software.
@benmschmidt @zoeleblanc oh! Well that doesn’t seem good! I do keep seeing this warning post come around warning you not to think of this as a private messaging platform at any time.
@konrad @benmschmidt @zoeleblanc
Yeah, two issues here: One is that admins can see DMs, which is true with for-profit social media as well but they just don’t like to talk about that.
@konrad @benmschmidt @zoeleblanc
The other is what Ben is pointing out, that DMs aren’t *essentially* different from posts. The federated nature of the network means that this could be a gotcha when spanning systems; it probably makes sense to test first when DMing somebody who isn’t on a vanilla Mastodon instance.
@tkinias @konrad @benmschmidt thanks for all the advice!! Seems like DMing is best elsewhere (at least for now). Also interesting that reading these replies seems tricky (not clear where a thread begins and ends)
@tkinias @konrad @zoeleblanc Yeah there's also that "who the DM is to" and "who is mentioned in the DM" seem to be fully concurrent. So if I've been DMing Konrad and then write him "WTF is @tkinias talking about? Anyhow, mstdn.social is a lame server for noobs," then that message gets sent to Thanasis too! Right?
@benmschmidt @tkinias @konrad Wait so if I DM someone to complain about them and tag them in the mention, they will get the DM 
!!
Also glad to see that your ability to be "provocative" hasn't diminished with the platform change Ben 
!! Also some of us joined this platform in 2017 when there was no cool servers 
@zoeleblanc @tkinias @konrad Again, WTF do I know, but that's sure how Noëlle Anthony's guide reads.
I do remember the lack of other servers in 2017... I even made some headway into trying to set one up!
@konrad @zoeleblanc Yeah I don't want to spread FUD because I haven't read anything but that document recently: but I'm inclined to leave the DMs especially w/ an unencrypted, federated system like this. Slack's DMs have always been better than Twitter's, anyway, IMO.